I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Fit of the Week: Slicer

In honor of the coming warp speed acceleration changes and the inevitable complaints that fleets are going to be murdered by rampaging interceptors, let's make October anti-interceptor month around here, featuring ships that excel at anti-frigate work. Any well-balanced PvP fleet should include an anti-frigate wing to prevent your heavier ships from being tackled. Of course, the combat interceptors themselves will excel at this role, but I'll do some favorite interceptor fits after Rubicon drops. And keep in mind the goal of fits this month are escort ships that will primarily be defensive in nature.

Small Energy Burst Aerator I
Small Energy Metastasis Adjuster I
Small Energy Locus Coordinator I

The Slicer is a seriously scary tackler, perhaps the best faction frigate in the game right now. The five lows make it really versatile: you can go full-nano, tracking, and damage with minimal tank, or you can over-tank the thing like a beast and just hang on to a much tougher target. For escort duty, a mix is best. A single damage mod combined with an energy burst aerator rig pushes DPS at close range to 189 before heat, which is quite good for a frigate. Since you're on escort, overheat the guns pretty much whenever you fire them and carry plenty of paste. The meta NOS will sink a lot of heat and allow you to also act as a tackler against heavier targets.

The tackle mod in question is open to some debate: some Slicer pilots swear by scrams, others by points. For escort, the balance slightly favors the latter so that you can keep tackle frigs hanging out at their point range pinned down. For this reason, you're going to have to keep your point overheated as well, and you'll almost certainly need links on top of that. The two remaining rigs to increase tracking and range will allow you to switch out to Scorch and have a good chance at nailing the pest even in a high-speed orbit. Carry Drop booster of the type of your choice ready for this work as well.

The fit is supplemented by a strong self-rep burst tank and lots of buffer EHP: 6k or so with decent resists. This will allow you to give chase if your quarry warps off, or be able to stay in a large-scale fire fight as you hunt down and kill your prey. At 38m, your signature is quite tiny which will further assist in repelling damage. Again: carry lots and lots and lots of paste, because not only does the AAR use it, you're going to be overheating every active module on this ship.

Escort missions are one of the banes of video games and by signing up to fly this ship, you've essentially volunteered for one. But if you're going to do it, do it right. Your job is to stick pretty close to the heavier or more valuable ships in your fleet unless ordered otherwise. With an afterburner, you sacrifice mobility but it's also tougher for opponents to keep you at bay. You should therefore be flying within your optimal against larger targets and should let smaller targets come to you rather than the other way around. Don't get dragged away from the ship or fleet you're escorting unless you're specifically ordered to pursue a fleeing ship that warps off, for instance.

In addition, keep a pretty good handle on where your friendlies are. I usually advocate keeping fleet members off your overview but this might be an exception. In particular, you might have to peel enemy frigs off friendly logi or e-war ships and you should therefore have a good way of identifying where these ships are. Whether you do it with overview or watch list is up to you.

Escorts are usually given free reign to ignore primaries and instead concentrate on tackle. As a result, you should have another overview setting for tacklers only: frigates and T2 frigates primarily, though in some instances you might want to add cruisers and HACs as well. Stick close to your fleet, sort this overview by range, and keep a close eye on system notifications. Anything that tackles a friendly or comes in close are your primary targets. And any time a friendly says "can't warp, I'm tackled," you should immediately ask "by who?" and make that ship your priority if it's something small.

It's also not the worst idea in the world to have a drones overview tab as well. Failing anything else, your job might be to clear EC drones off your logistics or e-war ships.

Finally, if your fleet has to run, as an escort your job is to warp off last. Make sure the heaviest, slowest stuff in the fleet is keeping up, and wait at each stargate for these ships to pass you, then jump through the gate behind them. Then wait for them to decloak, align to the next gate with them, wait for them to get safely into warp, repeat. If they get tackled, particularly right after a jump, it's your job to commit yourself to removing that tackle.

This is a pretty specific kind of flying, but the Slicer is up to it. Are you?

All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only. You
may not have the skills needed for this exact fit. If you do not, feel
free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta
3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war. Ships can also be adjusted
to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the
pilot flying it. Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce
you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type
of ship more aggressively and well.

19 comments:

Hmm... as a noob solo-er I find the slicer to be the most difficult faction frig, by far. I hope you'll point out a good fit for it someday (I looked around), because it does look like it should be awesome... but I've killed DDs in Hookbills and Firetails, and I generally lost all Slicers.

How would you catch up to an interceptor to kill it in an AB frig though? Do you just putter over into his orbit path and wait for him to come by so you can get a few hits before he's out of range again?

My main question about this is: Why would you ever fly something like this,designed to play elaborate games with enemy tackle, instead of a RML caracal or cerb to just MURDER them, or an extra falcon to just jam them out?

Low-skilled fleet members, and giving them something to do, is the answer that comes up. Which is a valid answer. But, well, it's about the ONLY one as well, I think.

I don't think you have to worry much about tracking with this. This is a kiting tackler. With those locus coordinators, scorch is hitting for about 150(?) dps with an optimal range out to 26 km (maybe more). And the faction warp disruptor hitting out at 24 km, or about 28 when overheated.

Confirm. I expected this fit to be controversial. Any escort ship is going to have to make compromises. Wait until we get to the anti-frigate BC I want to feature? I expect to *really* get yelled at then.

Interesting idea I guess, but I can't possibly imagine ever wanting to use this instead of a triple shield extender RLML Caracal. It'd be faster, have more EHP, better damage projection, and cost about the same.

The warp speed changes don't seem to be that big a deal. No one seems to be raging about it (except freighter pilots who always complain that their ships are slow). We always warp as a fleet, so who cares?

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